Monthly Archives: March 2010

With only four teams left in the hunt for the Easterns title there was yet to be anything that anyone would consider a big upset. Of the four teams that were still alive, Virginia was the only one that was not a No. 1 seed in its pool and that pool was the only pool that had three teams advance to quarterfinals.

Both semifinal games seemed like they were going to be the first example of the big upset but in the end, both the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds for the tournament pulled out victories and moved on to finals. Wisconsin came out on top of Middlebury 13-9 and Pitt beat out Virginia by the same score. However, that wasn’t before the Pranksters and Night Train gave the Hodags and En Sabah Nur a good scare.

Quarterfinals had a bit of a different feel than prequarters. All four of the teams that had advanced through prequarters had advanced through dogfight games. Mostly fighting tooth and nail to advance, only to face an even tougher opponent than the round before.

Just like prequarters, we were only able to watch three of these games. Wisconsin toppled Brown by a count of 15-6. We have no further information as to the manner of method by which this happening occurred. Meanwhile, Pitt whooped Georgia, 15-5, Middlebury and Virginia both avenged Saturday losses, Middlebury over Virginia Tech 15-9 and Virginia over Cornell 14-11.

Georgia junior Matt Bailey lays out for and catches a 'mac'ed disc to save a possession for UGA. Photo courtesy of Jesse von Fange. http://www.unitesports.biz

Although most things had gone more or less to seed on Saturday, the only exception being Jojah not winning its pool, prequarters presented an opportunity for many quality teams to go home.

The matchups included: UGA vs. UNCW, San Diego State vs. Cornell, East Carolina vs. Virginia Tech and Ohio State vs. Brown. We only could watch three of these at a time so we can only report that Brown defeated Ohio State 15-11, we do not know the manner or method in which this transpired.

As we experienced at the Tally Classic, getting an opportunity to play under the lights is a good opportunity indeed. Four teams got that chance at Easterns but they each had something more on the line as well. Easterns was putting up two sets of 15 VC jerseys to add to the pot, one set to go to the winner of each of the games.

From pool A, Pittsburgh En Sabah Nur squared off with Ohio State Leadbelly and from pool B the Wisconsin Hodags met up with the UNCW Seamen. Pittsburgh won handily by a score of 15-8 and Wisconsin clung to an early lead to win 15-11.

Cornell's Ethan Pollack comes down with a catch block over Jojah's Matt Bailey at College Easterns. Photo courtesy of Jesse von Fange. http://www.unitesports.biz

In their final pool play game of the day, Georgia and Cornell squared off against each other in a game that had plenty of meaning. Since Jojah had lost to UVA and Virginia, in turn, had lost to Cornell, a Bulldog victory would create a three-way tie across the pool that would be decided by point differential.

Needless to say, both UGA and Cornell were feeling the pressure coming into the game and with the wind picking up, the game was bound to be an exciting one.

Cornell would mount a huge comeback over the course of the game in order to pull out a 14-13, double game point, victory over the Dawgs.

In the next round we encountered two of the biggest surprises of the tournament. On one side of the coin we had San Diego State, one of the two west coast teams to make the trip, the Federalis had already held a late lead over Pitt and beaten UNCW in the showcase game on Friday night. On the other side of the coin was Kansas, a Nationals qualifier last year and a team that had driven 25 hours on a charter bus to get some good competition in, but had surprisingly poor results so far this season.

While the wind picked up even more, one had to imagine that the weather was playing right into the hands of one of our next subjects. As we mentioned before, Virginia Tech is known for their zone defense. So we expected big things going into Burn’s matchup against Brownian Motion, especially considering Burn’s results from 8s and the team’s thrashing of Middlebury in round one.

However, Brown had other things in mind. Brownian Motion exhibited a patience and reserve of a Nationals level team and found the holes in VT’s zone, earning a 15-13 victory.